This blog, written by Thomas E. Rutledge, focuses primarily on business entity law in Kentucky. Postings on contract law, contractual and statutory construction, and the entity law of other jurisdictions appear as well. There may as well be some random discussions of classical, medieval and renaissance history.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

The Battle of Dyrrhechium – Don’t I Know You From Somewhere?

The
Battle of Dyrrhechium – Don’t I Know You From Somewhere?

While the story of the Battle of Hastings (October 14)
usually continues with a discussion of the Norman-French political and to a
certain extent cultural conquest of England, it is interesting to consider the
fate of certain of those who fought for the losing side of Harold.

The core of Harold’s army was a corps of household troops
named the housecarls.They fought with
the Norwegian/Viking battle ax, sometimes with a shaft of four feet in
length.While it is true that in the
Middle Ages it would not be surprising for a person to be born, live and die
within a few miles of the same spot, all too often it is assumed that such
limited travel was typical.Likely it
was not.

After Hastings, some of Harold’s housecarls traveled to
Byzantium and there joined the Byzantine Emperor’s Varangian Guard.According to some sources, some of those
housecarls, now as members of the Varangian Guard, fought at the Battle of
Dyrrhachium on October 18, 1081, a battle which took place in modern day
Albania.Where they were opposing Norman
invaders (the Normans had invaded and made a kingdom in Sicily and were seeking
to expand their reach).According to
those same sources, certain of the troops who had fought as mercenaries for
William (now the Conqueror) in England in 1066 now faced off against the now
Varangian former housecarls of
Harold.

Normans versus Saxons, this time in Albania.Not everyone stayed close to home.

Today is as well the anniversary of one of the greatest
sacrileges of all time, that being the ordering of the destruction in 1009 of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem under the orders of Al-Hakim
bi-Amr Allah.